Im going to wager that Charles Tweed graduated from dental school some time ago. To get into dental school these days, you do need to volunteer hundreds of hours, you do need good grades, and you do need high test scores. It is very competitive now and to be successful at the application process requires that you decide which path you want to take early enough to devote the time necessary to be a competitive applicant. The debate about which is easier to get into or whose exams are tougher isnt relevant. You have to be smart to get into med and dental school, you have to be smart to get through med and dental school, and you have to be smart to learn what you need to in order to be good at your job. Careers in both of these avenues of the healthcare field pay well, but if youre looking to make a gazillion dollars, go into investment banking. The more relevant question for your longterm happiness is how you want to spend your days when you are out of school and actually working.
Your day-in day-out job as a physician will vary greatly depending on what area of medicine you practice in. You could be doing anything from autopsies to placing breast implants to brain surgery to walking around handing out hypertension and UTI meds (as my physician described her job to me). The realities of what each of those specific jobs entail are very different.
As a dentist, you have to like working with your hands (not necessarily true for physicians). You have to enjoy doing things that require multiple detailed steps done very meticulously (not necessarily true for physicians). You have to have a good eye for shapes and contours (not usually true for physicians). You have to be able to think like an engineer, assess directions of forces, and understand how biological processes and your restorative materials will react to those forces (not necessarily true for physicians). You have to be able to remember a huge amount of information for diagnostics and administering/ prescribing meds (also very true for physicians, and to an even greater degree). You have to be a people person (may or may not be true for physicians- depends on how much you need to rely on repeat business). Dentistry draws from a lot of different types of thought processes at once- you have to be a scientist, an artist, an engineer, a psychologist. This makes the job very intellectually stimulating. Diagnostics is a huge part of dentistry, but you also have to competently and physically DO something about your diagnosis, such as wielding a 400,000 RPM drill in someones mouth, working within measurements of a fraction of a millimeter, then fabricating a mini-sculpture that looks and functions like a natural tooth and will last for years. It can be stressful- some find the level of precision required very rewarding, others could find it tedious.
As a dentist, you will not save someones life in the ER room, you will not deliver a baby, you will not set broken arms, and you will have MDs inform you on occasion that you are not a real doctor, as smart as they are, or as talented as they are... As a dentist, you will be very involved in the overall health of your patient and will save lives through detection of multiple diseases youll see in your patients, such as CVD and oral cancers. Realistically, most MDs arent spending their days saving lives in the ER either, but some are and dentists never will be, so if thats what you believe would make your life worthwhile, go to medical school.
However, disregard anyone who says that you should go into medicine and not dentistry if youre interested in helping people. Two huge aspects of what dentists do is relieve people from debilitating pain and improve quality of life through improving esthetics. Repairing some unsightly decay or misshapen teeth may not sound that important to some people, but for the person thats had difficulty getting a job, meeting a life partner, being comfortable in social situations, etc, being able to smile confidently is a life changer. If youve spent any amount of time doing dentistry, youve seen people in tears thanking you for getting them out of horrible pain or helping them smile without feeling embarrassed. That feels pretty rewarding to me.
